Today only, shirt.woot has this design for $10 and free shipping. Seriously people, leave the robot dancing to the robots. They’re so much better at it.

[ shirt.woot ]

BotJunkie now has a Twitter account (http://twitter.com/BotJunkie) that we’ll eventually be using to post additional robot news, but for the moment is for live event coverage, like Maker Faire (where we are right now). Over the weekend, we’ll be tweeting pics and stuff, but if you’re not into Twitter, we’ll have a gallery for you on Monday.

[ BotJunkie on Twitter ]

It takes a demonstration like this to make you realize just how critical body language is to conveying emotion. Kobian is a humanoid robot developed by Takanishi Lab at Waseda University (remember them?) to explore how robots might get better at natural human communication. Among its many physical talents (walking, tactile/visual/olfactory sensing, etc.), Kobian is able to bodily express a variety of different emotional states, including happiness, fear, surprise, sadness, anger, and disgust. See if you can guess which one this is:

Kobian isn’t just doing this passively, either… It’s actually been programmed to select appropriate emotional responses based on a “mental state,” which in turn is influenced by internal and external stimuli. So yes, if you try, I’m sure you can get it to make its disgusted face. Eventually, Kobian might end up in nursing, or in some other environment where realistic human interaction is a priority.

[ WE-4RII ] VIA [ Pink Tentacle ]

Spirit is still stuck in deep sand on Mars, and engineers at JPL aren’t yet sure what to do. Julian, age 7, had this idea:

According to JPL: “Julian’s idea to use the arm is a good start. It’s not strong enough to push the rover out but perhaps it can be used in other ways.” Way to think outside the sandbox, Julian.

[ Spirit ] VIA [ BBG ]

I’m a bagpiper. Seriously, I am. And I’m pretty good, too (here’s me playing with my old band). But as with most things, if a human can do it, so can a robot, and as we’ve seen, musical instruments are no exception. A team from Carnegie Mellon constructed this bagpiping robot, called McBlare, back in 2006. McBlare uses an air compressor to simulate lungs, has electromagnetic fingers to play notes, and is completely computer controlled. Here’s an MP3 of McBlare playing a tune.

Now, as a professional bagpiper, I have to say that I’m surprised by how well it seems to work, and a little bit jealous of how easy it makes it sound (bagpipes are, if I may say so, a very physical instrument and quite difficult to play well). The technical execution is (as you’d expect) good, and the tone is (also as you’d expect) very steady, which is one of the trickiest things to do on a bagpipe, since you have to transition between blowing and squeezing the bag without changing the pressure. As for the expression, well, the expression sucks. It’s, um, robotic. But it’s not that robotic, and some bits are more robotic than others, leading me to believe that it could be vastly improved with a little bit of creative programming. I’m not sure what prevents them from just getting a professional to play a tune, sound mapping it, and using those data to program the robot to play better.

What was most impressive, though, is that the robot can be programmed to play music that a human would (probably) find physically impossible. I’ve heard some very good pipers play some nearly impossible tunes, but at some point, fingers get tired and slow and inconsistent. If you listen to this clip (*.mp3), you’ll hear a sample of this at about 4:08. Just hearing that makes my fingers cramp.

[ McBlare ]

Thanks Colin!

Looks like iRobot (or somebody) is trying awfully hard to dump stock of ‘budget’ model 500 series Roombas… Woot.com had this same deal running just a couple months ago. It’s a good deal, though, with the 535 offering pretty much the same options and cleaning performance as all of the more expensive 500 series bots. Hmm, maybe they’re trying to clear out all the old inventory to make way for the new square models…

[ woot ]

Coming up this weekend here in the Bay Area is Maker Faire, a festival of awesomeness that celebrates people who, you know, make stuff. You remember Maker Faire from last year, where we had a whole bunch of this and a smattering of this, followed somewhat shockingly by this? Yeah, that’s right. It looks like Pleo took a little bit more damage than we might have thought at the time. Anyway, this year ComBots has been folded into RoboGames (which takes place just two weekends later), but that doesn’t mean that Maker Faire will be devoid of robot action. Quite the contrary, I hope, with everything from combat robots to Russell the robot giraffe to who knows what else… But that’s part of the fun. We’ll be doing our best to post pics all weekend, both here at over at OhGizmo.

Buy tickets here.

[ Maker Faire ]

This little kit might be a good way to get someone you know into robots, since it’s dirt cheap ($21), doesn’t require tools, and only has 25 parts. Somehow, you’re able to build six dramatically different things with those parts, including a boat, a car, a dog that is apparently somehow in space, and some windmilly type things, all of which operate on solar power. This is only a robot in an extremely narrow sense, and honestly, I’m not sure if it really qualifies as a robot at all, since I don’t think it responds to any control or stimuli. But heck, it looks like fun, you get to build stuff, it’s eco-friendly or whatever, and like I said before, it’s dirt cheap. You’ll find it over at Red5 in the UK.

[ Red5 ] VIA [ GeekAlerts ]

It looks like a gesture of friendship, but you know what the human is saying? “OW OW OW PLEASE STOP CRUSHING MY HAND!” It’s $20.

[ NerdyShirts ] VIA [ io9 ]

Robot Stock News has dug up a patent application from iRobot in 2008 with drawings of a new type of Roomba with a square front and what looks to be a redesign of the cleaning system underneath. The idea behind this design is to make the robot better at “cleaning along wall edges or in corners,” which the current generation of round Roombas have tried to tackle with their generally ineffective spinning side brushes. And while a square front would certainly be better at doing that, sacrifices would have to be made when it comes to mobility: no more zero radius turns. And considering how often Roombas manage to stuff themselves into corners, this could be kinda a big deal.

Now, this certainly doesn’t mean that iRobot is going to come out with a square front Roomba any time soon (if at all). Remember the iRobot lawn mower patent from back in 2007? And while the concept certainly has merit, my guess is that this would be a more expensive robot, which would probably not go over well at the moment. The big question is, if this thing comes out, is it going to be a significant enough upgrade to convince people who haven’t yet bought a Roomba to buy one of these, or people who own Roombas to upgrade? I honestly don’t know, because I don’t know if the shortcomings of the Roomba (and edge cleaning is certainly one of these) would be best solved by modifications to hardware or software or both. In order for me to upgrade my Roomba, iRobot would have to convince me that they had something that would actually do the job as well as I could… Otherwise, it’s just more of a robot doing 80% of the work followed by a human doing 20% (your mileage may vary).

Oh, and one other thing… “Roomba” sort of has a round connotation, doesn’t it? Maybe they’ll call this thing “Squarmba” instead.

VIA [ RSN ]